MUSIC IN THE HOME

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 131, 30 November 1922, Page 8

MUSIC IN THE HOME

JO^N-PLANNING AND ITS EFFECTS

I/AST NIGHT OF OAMEAIGK.

Th& Health' Week campaign concluded in the^ Town Hall last night. There was again a large audience in aU'parts of the hall. Professor J. S. Tennant, of Victoria University College, presided. The first lecture oE the evening was "Music and its Effect on Home Life/ by Mr. Robert Parker. Home life, he said, as they oi the Victorian period understood it, had pretty well disappeared, and life generally was none the better for it. In making life better, and correcting demoralising influence, music had a great part to play. Music was able to contribute materially in an age of noise, destruction, and unreal to the repose of life. Its use. in modem life was as a means of escape. There never was a time when such an escane was more necessary, and the mission'of those who cultivated music was never more valuable. Music had great possibilities as a therapeutic agent in mental disorders. During the ,Great War and after music had done a great service in the caae of shell-shock patients and others of a similar nature. Instances were quoted of severe cases where stammerers through shell-shock had been cured by learning voice-produc-tion. A miner who had been blown up in Mesopotamia and had been silent for two years recovered nis speech. Another man said after treatment: "I lost my leg and my voice. ' I got my voice back, and the leg does not. matter." (Laughter and applause.) Many such examples had come within his own ken.

Quoting Martin Luther, the speaker urged that music should be.taught the young in schools. The work of Luther had resulted in the production of great musical geniuses. Emotional training was as indispensable as intellectual training, and had a definite role in modern education. All true education muso have an artistic side. Class . singing properly taught improved every faculty* of the pupil. Boys trained in music were among the elite in, intellect. Rightly directed it could be made the pivot on which education turned. In regard to homo life and social life, New Zeaianders might be apt to imagine themselves a musical people. The great need to-day was the encouragement of music in the home that young people should 3pend their time, there instead, of the picture show. (Applause.) Home should he home and-not merely a boarding-house. (Hear, hear.) The good old times had gone beyond recall, but how could they recapture the spirit of those old reading days? No mechanical means like the pianola or the gramophone would give the same result. The cottage piano had probably done more for the happiness of the home than almost any other instrument in life. The widespread practice of singing was of great value also. The voice was intimately connected with the brain, and both benefited from singing. In many of the primary schools singing was admirably taught. Personally he had heard boys in the street whistling airs from Mozart and Purcell. This was a sign. Music rightly used was all for the good of the individual, the family, paramountly for the young and for home life. For these reasons music deserved an honoured place in the family and social life. (Loud and prolonged applause.) Part-songs sung by the chiflren's choir from the Normal School, Kelburn, under Mr; Blake, and the Karori School, under; Mr. W l. H. Stainton,' were verj warmly appreciated. APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION. The concluding lecture was on "Town Planning," by Mr. A. Leigh Hunt, who for many years has been an enthusiastic advocate of town-planning. The essence of town-planning was to look ahead. The people who had looked ahead were the New Zealand Land Company, .vhich had given Wellington its Town Belt. He knew of no other such instance in New Zealand 'of such far foresight. Townplanners were hopeful that with the advent of hydro-electric power many of the industries now carried on in towns would be transferred to the country. In regard to the lay-out of a town, he personally was against anything in the nature of tenements or flats. He believed in the house detached- with its garden. Towns had sprung into existence and grown in a very haphazard way. They were building their cities without a plan. Mistakes were very difficult to remedy. Every town should have a development plan—not in detail, but in skeleton form —so that the growth of the town in *the future should all be on one concerted plan. Air spaces should be provided for. Even the worst of towns could be regenerated over.. a long period. As to homes, he was strongly in favour of putting them up in permanent materials. The day, of the wooden box was over. It was up to the women who had to live so much at home to insist on better homes and townplanning. To encourage the spread of population, preferential rates should be given to dwellers in the further suburbs. At present theiwhole effect of tram and train fares had been all tending to drive the people into the centre :of "the towns, and thus to create alums. Spreading the people would prevent industrial unrest." Lord Islington had told them, when he was Governor, in 1912, and addressed the Munioipal Conference, that there was a danger of the urban evils of the Old Country growing in New Zealand —the growth of slums and their concomitant J disabilities. ■ • i

Mr. Leigh Hunt then went into details of the principles of town-planning witli its lines of demarcation. The time had come for the City Council to 'take up development plans, and the force of public opinion should be brought to bear ori the authorities at the coming municipal elections. There were only a lot of amateurs in New Zealand, and the Government should get a qualified townplanner. New Zealand was about twenty years behind the time in town-planning. Town-planning actually paid. It was applied common-sense. Wellington lacked a civio spirit, more so, he believed, than any other city of the Dominion. A man should realise that ho should, as a good citizen, take an interest in .public affairs. New Zealand had the conditions whereby they could set an example to the whole world. Let them do it.

During the evening a musical entertainment was provided by Mrs. Alexander, Mr. Howard Foster, and Mr. Eric Rishwortb. (vocalists), Miss Dorothy Mills (pianoforte), and Miss May Joyco (violin). ■ .